JNN Newsletter - May 14, 2017

May. 14, 2017

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms,” Ephs 6:12

USA PRESSURES ABBAS TO END CONTROVERSIAL PAYMENTS TO TERRORISTS’ FAMILIES: Western countries are pressuring Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to end payments to families of Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails and to families of those killed while attacking Israelis. President Trump raised these payments in a recent meeting with Abbas at the White House. Israel says the system incentivizes terrorism, and it sees the payments as a test of the Palestinians' willingness to make compromises. This "is not a social-welfare program," said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). "If the Palestinian Authority is truly concerned about human welfare, it should show a little more concern for the innocent people these terrorists have killed." The Palestinian Authority in 2016 paid out roughly $300 million to tens of thousands of families of prisoners or Palestinians killed by Israel, according to data published by the Palestinian administration and collated by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. (Wall St. Journal) Continue to intercede that this issue of paying salaries to terrorists jailed in Israel for murdering and maiming innocent Israeli men, women and children will be loudly and repeatedly exposed, reputed, and accompanied with stiff penalties from Western leaders. Abbas needs to be faced with the reality of his overwhelming hypocrisy when he speaks of being open to peace with Israel while, behind the scenes, he and the society he rules glorify terrorism, call murderers heroes, support anti-Israel media incitement, and groom their children to be jihadists. Intercede that USA President Trump and his administration will not be blind to the facts.

DANON: UN SECURITY COUNCIL MUST STOP PA FROM PAYING TERRORISTS: Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon demanded Thurs. 11 May 2017 that the UN Security Council intervene to end Palestinian Authority payments to jailed terrorists and their families, saying the PA policy incentivizes terror attacks on Jews and prevents the establishment of peace between Israel and the PA. “The Security Council must act immediately to put an end to the funding of terrorists by the Palestinian Authority. Aid provided by the donor countries to the PA every year ends up funding terrorist who murdered innocent Israelis,” Danon said in a media interview outside of the Security Council. Danon’s statements came a day after the ambassador sent a letter to the Security Council on the issue “According to Palestinian Authority laws and regulations, every terrorist arrested, tried and imprisoned receives monthly financial payments. The more Israelis killed, the longer the terrorist is sentenced to prison, the higher payment the terrorist receives from the PA,” Danon wrote. “A Palestinian terrorist who murders civilians and is sentenced to over thirty years in prison receives over 3,000 USA dollars a month. Put simply, this is official Palestinian blood-money, rewarding terrorists who murder Jews. The State and people of Israel want nothing more than to live in peace and security with all of our neighbors. If the Palestinians seek the same goal, then their first step must be to stop the glorification of terrorists.” (Arutz-7)

TERROR VICTIMS AND BEREAVED FAMILIES LOOK TO MEET WITH TRUMP: Israelis wounded by Arab terror attacks and the bereaved families of Israelis killed by terrorism have requested that President Trump meet with them during his upcoming trip to Israel later this month. Victims of terrorism and bereaved families associated with the Almagor Terror Victims Association penned a joint letter to Trump, calling on him to meet with representatives of the group prior to making any push for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In the letter, the victims and bereaved families wrote that it was important for the president to see the results of the PA’s years of anti-Israel incitement and funding for jailed Arab terrorists. “We are concerned that you intend to open direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority before the PA stops paying salaries to murderers, who murdered Israelis, our dear ones,” the letter reads, adding that “funding of terrorists is part of the incitement which motivates youths to become murderers. Before any negotiations the Palestinians must demonstrate that they are truly ready to change their way by stopping incitement and payment of salaries to terrorist murderers." (INN)

VISION FOR ISRAEL HELPS TERRORIST VICTIMS AND THEIR FAMILIES: Victims of terror in Israel face, in many cases, months of rehabilitation, loss of work, emotional trauma, all of which affect entire families. Vision for Israel helps support victims of terror and their loved ones. This is in addition to providing comfort and provision for many of the nation’s poor, including children, and the elderly. Please give generously at www.visionforisrael.com. For residents in the UK and outside N. America visit our website at www.josephstorehouse.co.uk

FRIEDMAN TO TRUMP: NOT MUCH CHANCE FOR ISRAEL-PA PEACE DEAL: While President Donald Trump has expressed his “personal commitment” to help reach a final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, senior advisers are less than optimistic such a deal can be brokered, and have made their skepticism clear to the president. President Trump is scheduled to arrive in Israel in 10 days, a trip that will likely kick off his much-anticipated effort to bring Israel and the Palestinian Authority back to the negotiating table. A week before Trump arrives, USA Ambassador to Israel David Friedman will land in Israel. Friedman, a long-time Trump confidant, has reportedly warned the president that the chances of brokering a comprehensive deal between Israel and the PA are exceedingly slim. Two senior officials have said that Friedman and others told the president that efforts to secure a lasting peace would be unlikely to succeed. “Trump heard this from Friedman, from other people on his team, and also from people outside the White House whom he consulted,” one official was quoted as saying. Nevertheless, Trump apparently remains optimistic. (INN) Beneath the facade of the so called “moderate” Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel’s unrelenting enemy, the Hamas terrorist group, there is little difference. Not much is said by Western leaders regarding ceremonies honoring terrorists, or hate-filled Palestinian text books and children’s television shows. Small mention is made how ongoing evidence of animosity in PA society shatters trust in Israel that Palestinians have any plans for future Arab generations living side by side with them in harmony. Commitment to peace must start with hard work on the part of PA leaders to make changes within their own society – to create an atmosphere - a womb in which peace can be nurtured without bias, hypocrisy, or shaping the minds of the young for unceasing hatred and violence against the Jewish people and Israel throughout future generations.

HAMAS TERRORIST GROUP CONFIRMS NOTHING HAS CHANGED REGARDING CALL FOR ISRAEL’S DESTRUCTION: Lest observers be confused by the recent news stories about a “new” Hamas charter that softens some of its most rabid terrorism, Hamas leadership has clarified the point. According to senior Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar, the original 1988 charter calling for the destruction of the Jewish state remains very much in effect. Because of the media focus of attention on the changes in language in the supplemental document and the media’s insistence that because of a reference to pre-1967 borders being acceptable to Hamas the charter supplement somehow implied acceptance of Israel’s right to exist, A-Zahar set the record straight. “When people say that Hamas has accepted the 1967 borders, like others, it is an offence to us. We have reaffirmed the unchanging constant principles that we do not recognize Israel; we do not recognize the land occupied in 1948 as belonging to Israel and we do not recognize that the people who came here (Jews) own this land. Therefore, there is no contradiction between what we said in the document and the pledge we have made to God [Allah] in our original charter.” (Media Line) In actuality, there is no such thing as a Palestinian people; who have supposedly had their non-existent entitlement to the land of Israel violated. There is no such thing as a Palestinian history; and no Palestinian language exists. There has never been any independent, sovereign Palestinian state in all of recorded history – let alone an Arab independent state of Palestine. You will search in vain for Palestinian Arab coinage or Palestinian Arab archaeological artifacts specifically related to any Palestinian Arab king or ancient leader. But what you will find are coins, pottery, ancient scrolls, all providing conclusive, empirical and millennial evidence of Jewish civilization dotting the land known correctly as Israel – not Palestine. The present-day so-called “Palestinians” are an Arab people sharing an overwhelmingly Muslim Arab culture, ethnicity and language identical to their fellow Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, with few if any distinctions. Yasser Arafat, the arch-terrorist, who imposed himself undemocratically upon the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians, was fond of repeating the absurd myth that Palestinian Arabs were descended from the Canaanites and the Philistines. As we know, the bigger the lie, the bigger the number of people will believe it. And so Arafat twisted history in order to disinherit the indigenous native people of the land: the Jews. Continue to pray that the lies being fostered by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority will be exposed, challenged and toppled by the historical facts.

REPEAT BRITISH ROYAL SNUB TO ISRAEL: Following Prince Charles’ two non-diplomatic visits to Israel, there were high hopes that relations between the monarchy of Great Britain and Israel could be warming up, even possibly leading to a return visit by Prince Charles - potentially the first historic diplomatic visit to Israel by a senior member of the royal family. Days ago, the Sun tabloid quashed the hopes and silenced the rumors when they reported that the first in line to the British throne will not be visiting Israel as the British Foreign Office has curtailed his trip. Prince Charles’s attended the late President Shimon Peres’ funeral last year as well as the funeral of the late PM Yitzhak Rabin in 1994. His father, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, made a brief visit to attend a ceremony in tribute to his late mother, Alice of Battenberg, who is buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. None of these visits were recognized as official. Despite the amicable relationship between Israel and the current and previous prime ministers of Great Britain, no U.K. government has approved any of the numerous, official invitations extended to the royal house over the years. This means that since the end of the British Mandate and the establishment of the state in 1948, no member of the monarchy has visited Israel in any official capacity. (Kehila News)

ISRAELI GROUP WINS BIRDING CONTEST: Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel birdwatchers participated in an international birding contest - and won first prize, for the third time in the past few years. The 34th World Series of Birding was held on 6 May 2017 in New Jersey, and the annual contest is considered to be one of the world's most important and exclusive birding contests in the world. During the contest, birdwatchers are required to identify as many types of birds as possible within a 24-hour period, within a given area at Cape May. The Israeli group, which took first place in both 2014 and 2015, identified 169 different species of birds during the allocated 24-hour period, nine more than the Cornell group which won second place. The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel initiated a similar project called "Birdlife," bringing bird-watchers from all over the globe to the Negev, Arava, and Eilat. (INN)

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Vision for Israel & The Joseph Storehouse is a non-profit organization founded by Barry & Batya Segal in 1994, out of the desire to help build and restore the Land of Israel. VFI provides aid to poor and needy people from all backgrounds, living in the nation of Israel today.